Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Goddamit George.

For those of you too scared to follow that link (and who can blame you) that is a clip of the sequence in Return of the Jedi where Luke is being tortured by the Emperor and Vader finally rises up to stop him. In the original film, Vader does this in total silence while the music rises amazingly, because that entire scene is just plain an amazing example of combat as metaphor and storytelling.Hell one of my favorite moments from the entire trilogy is the moment where Luke snaps and starts attacking Vader.

In the updated scene Vader shouts 'No...NOOOOOO' before attacking the Emperor, utterly destroying the subtly and being entirely out of character for Vader. And there's not even a good storytelling reason for it, it's just a massive middle finger to everyone who pointed out how fucking stupid the big 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO' at the end of Revenge of the Sith was. God fucking dammit George.

You know, I've no problem with updating a movie after release, but the Special Edition bullshit just drives me up the fucking wall. It's not restoring a movie damaged by Producers in Post-Production like Blade Runner or Metropolis (or if you want a great example, see the Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut. It's like an entirely different movie). It's not even adding stuff to the story like the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions. The additions at best don't damage the film, at worst ruin important scenes or character arcs (Han shooting second in New Hope actively DAMAGES his character arc, because it makes his move from criminal to hero less meaningful, and yes that's still there) and not one of them has actively helped. This obsession with shoving CGI shit into the margins of nearly perfect original films is indicative of his whole attitude towards the films, and his steadfast refusal to abandon them (I own a DVD set with the Special Editions as the main features and the theatricals as a special feature) is indicative of his attitude toward his audience.